OPPO Band Hands-on

Along with the arrival of the Enco X in the Philippines is OPPO’s latest wearable, the OPPO Band. Priced at well under PHP 2K, it’s one of the most affordable fitness bands you can get in the market. But what are you getting for that price? Find out below.

The OPPO Band comes in two colors, Black and Lavender. What we have is the latter. Although the color only applies to the strap as the fitness monitor is just all black and can be easily removed from the strap.

The strap is made from thermoplastic polyurethane or TPU, which is like a bridge between rubbers and plastics, which you can immediately observe by touching it. It’s firm but has a soft texture and highly flexible.

The fitness monitor, on the other hand, is also made of plastic. It’s secured in the strap using tiny pegs, but you can easily remove it by pushing it down. You can put it back by doing the reverse.

The OPPO Band has the size of a typical fitness band with a strap width of 15mm. It’s also light on the wrist and doesn’t get uncomfortable after hours of use. If you want to use its sleep monitoring function, you can wear it before you sleep and forget about it.

The fitness monitor features a 1.1-inch AMOLED touch screen with 126 x 294 pixels and 2.5D glass. Below it is the optical heart rate sensor, optical SpO2 sensor, and charging pins.

Swiping your finger to the left will bring up the installed watch faces, swiping to the right will exit, while swiping up and down will bring the apps available like Messages, Daily Activity, Workouts, Heart Rate, Continuous SpO2, Sleep, Breathing exercise, Weather, Tools (Music, Stopwatch, Timer, Alarm, Camera, Find Phone), and Settings.

Setting up will require you to download OPPO’s HeyTap Health app, which is available for Android and iOS. We still need to download it even if we’re using an OPPO Reno5 4G. The app requires that you make an account, agree on terms and conditions, and provide device permissions. The app will then automatically detect the OPPO Band and start pairing via Bluetooth 5.0. The whole process just took us around 10 minutes, so not a big deal.

You can access the OPPO Band’s status, settings, firmware updates, clock faces, and health stats from the app. Basically, it’s just a hub to manage OPPO health wearables similar to Samsung Health and Huawei Health.

So far, we like the OPPO Band as it has a crisp and punch display and responds well to the turn of our wrist, thanks to the 3-axis acceleration sensor. It notifies us of messages and incoming calls and also has a 5ATM water resistance rating, so you can take it with you in the shower or for a swim.

Powering the OPPO Band is an Apollo3 chip with 16MP of storage and a 100mAh battery. OPPO says that it can last for 12 days before you need to charge again. When it’s time to charge, just remove the monitor from the strap and place it in the USB-A charging dock.

The OPPO Band is a welcome addition to OPPO’s wearable line. At PHP 1,699USD 29INR 2,454EUR 28CNY 211, it’s affordable, making it an enticing device, especially for those who already own an OPPO smartphone.